Sermons and Addresses

By Marc Saperstein

When a respected scholar with a career at three major American universities moves to a position as principal of an important institution in UK, there is likely to be considerable interest in what he has to say not only to his students, but to many others as well. The two most important formats for such communication were the sermon and the academic lecture. Historically, the sermon has been an extremely important form of communication, first as verbal communication to a specific group of listeners, and then as a written text made available to many more readers. Marc Saperstein was a member of Beth Shalom Reform Congregation in Cambridge, where religious services were directed and sermons delivered not by the rabbi of the synagogue – which never had a rabbi – but by members of the congregation. During the five years from 2006-2011, Marc Saperstein delivered 29 sermons in Beth Shalom. He also was asked to deliver sermons at 15 other congregations. The texts of these sermons are now accessible in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398469204

Marc Saperstein

Marc Saperstein served as professor of Jewish Studies from 1977 to 2006 at Harvard Divinity School, Washington University in St Louis, and George Washington University in DC before moving to the UK for five years as Principal of Leo Baeck College in London. He continued teaching one course at LBC each autumn semester after moving to Cambridge. Author of 10 books and more than 100 academic articles, his primary interest is on the sermon as substance for Jewish history, literature and thought.

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About the Author

Marc Saperstein served as professor of Jewish Studies from 1977 to 2006 at Harvard Divinity School, Washington University in St Louis, and George Washington University in DC before moving to the UK for five years as Principal of Leo Baeck College in London. He continued teaching one course at LBC each autumn semester after moving to Cambridge. Author of 10 books and more than 100 academic articles, his primary interest is on the sermon as substance for Jewish history, literature and thought.

Dedication

For those who have listened to me speak publicly during this five-year period: at Leo Baeck College, at Beth Shalom Reform Congregation, at 15 other congregations, and at 28 gatherings of listeners interested in what I had to say. I am deeply grateful for their attention and their frequently enthusiastic responses.

Copyright Information ©

Marc Saperstein 2023

The right of Marc Saperstein to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Principal: Leo Baeck College

Greetings at Leo Baeck College Ordination

2 July 2006

Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London

"Preparing Rabbis for the Future:

Rabbinic Education in the Twenty-First Century"

6 July 2006

Leo Baeck College International Rabbinic Conference, Final Session

The Sermon as a Source for Jewish History, Literature and Thought

David Goldstein Memorial Lecture

12 July 2006

Liberal Jewish Synagogue

Not By Bread Alone

Eqev, 12 August 2006

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Rabbis and Congregations in Times of Crisis

8 September 2006

West London Synagogue of British Jews

On Warnings of Punishment

Ki Tavo, 9 September 2006

West London Synagogue of British Jews

On Sharing a Common Ancestor

Lekh Lekha, 4 November 2006

South West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue¹

Jews at the Beginning of WWI

Va-Yera, 11 November 2006

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Burial Sites and Holiness

"A Sermon on Ḥayyei Sarah"

Liberal Jewish Synagogue

18 November 2006

Two Names of God

Va-Eira, 20 January 2007

Alyth Gardens

Following a Majority

Mishpatim, 17 February 2007

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Medieval Jewish Preaching and Christian Homiletics

Lecture Given at International Conference

on Two Homiletical Traditions: Preaching in Judaism and Christianity

6 March 2007

Bamberg University, Bavaria

The Golden Calf: The Original Sin of the Israelite People?

Ki Tissa, 10 March 2007

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

American Jewish Preaching on the Great War

20 April 2007

British Association of Jewish Studies

"Ploughshares into Swords:

Anglo-Jewish Preaching During World War II"

30 April 2007

Yerushah Lecture, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge

A Nation of Prophets?

Be-Ha’alotekha, 2 June 2007

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

The Six-Day War: Then and Now

Shelaḥ, 9 June 2007

Birmingham Progressive Synagogue

Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs: First Yahrzeit

20 June 2007

New London Synagogue

הדרשה כמקור להיסטוריה, ספרות, ומחשבת ישראל: מצב במחקר

"The Sermon as Source for Jewish History, Literature and Thought:

The State of the Field"

16 July 2007

Zalman Shazar Lecture, Jerusalem

Jewish Eschatology: Christ and the Jewish People

17 August 2007

Leuven, Belgium

Anglo-Jewish Preaching During the Great War (1914–1918)

9 September 2007

Jewish Historical Society of England, Birmingham

The Sounds of Silence

Rosh Hashanah, 13 September 2007

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Crossroads in Life

Yom Kippur, 22 September 2007

Edgware and District Reform Synagogue

Literature in Jewish War-Time Sermons

21 October 2007

Jewish Literary Society of Edinburgh

Attitudes Towards Christianity in Modern Jewish Preaching

6 November 2007

Parkes Institute, University of Southampton

Visions of a Renewed Israel

Liberal Judaism Rabbinic Kallah

21 November 2007

For Thou Art with Us

Va-Yeshev, 1 December 2007

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

It Ain’t Necessarily So

History and Biblical Narrative

Bo, 12 January 2008

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Four Lepers at the Gate

Metzora, 12 April 2008

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Do Not Add to His Words [Deut. 4:2]

Erev Shavu’ot, 8 June 2008

Westminster Synagogue, London

The Widow Oppressed by the Torah

Koraḥ, 28 June 2008

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Is the Sermon on Its Deathbed?

Academic Conference

30 June 2008

Leo Baeck College, London

"‘Normative Judaism’ in the Crisis of War:

Sermons by Abraham Cohen and Israel Mattuck"

Proceedings of the British Association for Jewish Studies

Manchester Judaica Fest

21 July 2008

Is There an Unpardonable Sin?

Nitzavim, 27 September 2008

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Standing Before God: Music, Prayer, the Religious Life

Kol Nidre, 8 October 2008

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Bumps, Forks and Detours on the Road to God’s Kingdom

International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ)

27 October 2008

"Islam and the People of the Book:

Muslim-Jewish Contact Through the Ages"

9 November 2008

Northwest Surrey Synagogue

Jacob’s Dream and Ours

VaYetsei, 6 December 2008

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

"On Servitude and Emancipation: Eved Ivri"

Mishpatim, 21 February 2009

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Israel’s Original Sin

Ki Tissa, 14 March 2009

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Attacking Our Leaders

Ḥukkat, 4 July 2009

New North London Synagogue, Finchley

Moscato as Eulogist

Culture Transfer in a New Style:

The Renaissance Preacher Judah Moscato (1553–1590)

5 July 2009

Mantua, Italy

Utopian Legislation

Re’eh, 15 August 2009

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Spinoza’s Rabbi

Saul Levi Morteira’s Sermons

to a Congregation of Amsterdam New Jews

27 August 2009

Levisson Instituut

5769: What Went Wrong? Can We Do Better?

Yom Kippur Morning, 2009

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Abraham: The First Zionist?

Lekh Lekha: 31 October 2009

Birmingham Progressive Synagogue

Confronting Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia

10 November 2009

Joseph Interfaith Foundation

And Esau Wept Aloud

Regeneration After Disaster

VaYetsei, 28 November 2009

Bristol and West Progressive Jewish Congregation

"Religious Intolerance, Toleration,

and Openness to Other in the Middle Ages"

Sion Centre for Dialogue and Encounter

19 January 2010

Regeneration After Disaster

Northwood and Pinner Liberal Congregation

January 2010

Quoting ‘Unkosher’ Sources

Yitro, 6 February 2010

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

The Memory of Amalek

Zakhor, 27 February 2010

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Progressive Judaism at 200 Years: A Retrospect

5 March 2010

World Union for Progressive Judaism, European Region

Paris, France

Positions of Jewish Leadership: Sources of Authority and Power

International Jewish-Christian-Muslim Conference (JCM)

Power and Authority in Religious Traditions

15–21 March 2010

Wuppertal, Germany

Strange Fire

Shemini, 10 April 2010

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Theodor Herzl in Retrospect

(150th Anniversary of His Birth)

5 May 2010

Northwood and Pinner Liberal Congregation

To Curse or to Bless?

Balak, 26 June 2010

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

My Least Favourite Biblical Verse

Mattot Mas’ei, 10 July 2010

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

"9/11, ‘Burn a Koran Day’ and Shabbat Shuvah"

11 September 2010

Liberal Jewish Synagogue

Moses as Model

Yom Kippur, 2010

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Sacred Boundaries

Va-Yetzei, 13 November 2010

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Religious Leaders, Worldly Power: Tests from Hebrew Scriptures

The Scriptural Reasoning Launch Event Examination Schools

University of Oxford

25 November 2010

The Soul of the Stranger

Mishpatim, 29 January 2011

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Beaten for the Light

Tetsaveh, 11 February 2011

World Union for Progressive Judaism

Beth El Congregation, Berkeley, California

Christian Doctrine and the Death Camps: The Ambiguities of Influence

Birmingham Council of Christians and Jews

7 March 2011

New Perspectives

Shabbat Zakhor, 19 March 2011

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Naaman’s Discovery of God

Tazri’a, 2 Kings, Chapter 5

2 April 2011

Jewish-Christian-Muslim Brotherhood Week

The Song at the Sea

Seventh Day of Pesach, 25 April 2011

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

You Shall Be Holy

Kedoshim, 29 and 30 April 2011

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Manoah’s Wife, Samson’s Mother

Naso, 4 June 2011

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Leo Baeck College Ordination Address

4 July 2011

Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London

God’s Punishments: Or Are They?

Ki Tavo, 17 September 2011

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Rabbis as Preachers, 1800–1965

Regensburg Conference: Scholar – Preacher – Spiritual Advisor

Changing Role of Rabbis, Pastors

20 September 2011

The Art of Forgiving

Kol Nidre, 7 October 2011

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

Jews and Christians: Burdens from the Past, Challenges for the Future

Praying for Peace: Spirituality and Interfaith Dialogue

27 October 2011

Christ Church University, Canterbury

The Voice of the Outcast

Va-Yera, 12 November 2011

Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue, Cambridge

---

This sermon was repeated, following a new introductory paragraph, at Sha’arei Tzedek Southgate Progressive Synagogue on 16 October 2010.↩︎

Greetings at Leo Baeck College

Ordination 2 July 2006

Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London

I have the rather paradoxical role of welcoming you to this synagogue and to this occasion, when in fact I am the stranger here, while most of you are very much at home. Because of this, I feel a very deep sense of kinship with the men and women who are becoming ordained as rabbis today. For I am, as they are, starting on this day a new page in a new chapter of our lives. That is a bond I will always share with them.

You will have an opportunity to hear at length from others who have known and taught these young men and women. I will cite just one verse, from this week’s parashah: Mah tovu ohalekha Ya’akov, mishkenotekha Yisrael (Num. 24:5). It is the verse that begins the worship each day for the morning service. Our students know from their Biblical studies that this is an example of parallelism, two phrases expressing the same idea in parallel formulations. Yet there is a difference between an ohel, tent and a mishkan, here translated dwelling places. For the same word in the Torah often has the meaning of tabernacle, or sanctuary. The ohel is temporary, transient and mobile, folded up and taken wherever one goes. The mishkan implies something more solid and substantial, it belongs not to an individual but to a community, it has a permanent quality that the tent does not have; its etymology suggests a place where human beings, or the divine presence, may dwell.

And the juxtaposition of these two in the same verse tells us that both are important: the ohel, representing flexibility, movement and change, the mishkan, representing rootedness and permanence. I folded up my tent this last week in Washington, DC, and have now pitched it in London; but my mishkenot—the Long Island synagogue in which I grew up, my universities in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in Jerusalem, and the New York School of Hebrew Union College—these remain for me where they have always been.

You too, our new rabbis, may fold up your tent and move to different locations, different communities, different synagogues perhaps several times during your careers. But we hope that you will always think of your seminary, the Leo Baeck College, as your mishkan, a lasting, permanent source of renewed inspiration, where you can return and recharge your spiritual and intellectual batteries. And—who knows—perhaps someday 25 or 30 years from now, one of you will return here to your mishkan, as the new Principal of the College, to welcome the assembled to the ordination of a group of new rabbis who, like you today, will be well prepared to go out to the service of their people.

"Preparing Rabbis for the Future:

Rabbinic Education in the

Twenty-First Century"

6 July 2006² Leo Baeck College

International Rabbinic Conference,

Final Session

Frequently when I have spoken to a general audience on some historical topic—Jewish-Christian relations in the medieval or early modern period, or Jews living under the rule of Islam, or messianic movements or the Holocaust—the first question I receive is not on anything historical but rather something like, What do you think is going to happen…? To which my standard reply is, I am a historian, not a prophet. Today I am asked to project a vision for the future: what will be the needs of the next generation of British Jews, and of the next generation of rabbis who will serve them. Well, this kind of question goes beyond my academic expertise; nonetheless, the nature of my new position makes it now impossible for me to avoid responding.

I submit that in a very real sense, the task of the rabbinic program at LBC is all but impossible—and this has been dramatised for me by the various programs of our Conference. We have a five-year program of study. What do we want to accomplish with our students by the end of this period? What kind of training do we believe our rabbis will require to meet the needs of the progressive Jewish community, and of the general Jewish community, in the next generation? If we asked the leaders of our congregations what they believe is important, they might provide answers quite different from mine. But here is an outline of my vision.

1. First, we need to have rabbis who are learned in the tradition they represent; who have full access to the authentic and authoritative texts from our past and know the historical experience of our people. They don’t need to have the level of expertise of a university professor with a PhD, but they need to know what these professors are writing, in order to be able to teach Judaism to sophisticated Jewish congregants who will not be satisfied with platitudes and clichés. Our students need to master the best critical approaches to the subjects they are studying, even if this may be disturbing to some of them, who may find some of their assumptions challenged.

The essential tool for this is the Hebrew language. Despite the plethora of Jewish texts available in translation, authentic rabbinic learning has always been bound up with the original language of the sources, and this means a mastery of Hebrew to the point where it is not an obstacle to the content of the text, but rather the medium that expresses it. We simply cannot have rabbis for the next generation who are incapable of reading Torah correctly, and who are dependent on translations for the basic texts of our tradition.

I believe that we may want to rethink the practice of sending our students to Israel during the third year of their studies rather than the first year, but at least I would like to see a requirement that all incoming students spend the summer at an Israeli Ulpan (at the Hebrew Union College or the Hebrew University) for an immersion experience in Hebrew that will elevate the level of the experience in their introductory courses.

2. At the same time, our curriculum makes it clear that we are not intending to produce just scholars. The academic world is prone to its own intellectual fads and fashions, including a preoccupation with theory, frequent indulgence in virtually incomprehensible terminology, and a kind of post-modern relativism asserting there are no actual events in the past, only contesting narratives of what happened; no peshat of a text, only what readers have interpreted it to mean. Our students should be post-modern, but I would like them also be just a little bit pre-modern, capable of accessing the reality that produced these texts from the beit midrash alongside that of the academy. Our challenge is to provide the education for religious leaders who are both learned and pious human beings, whose commitment to the acquisition of knowledge about the Jewish past will deepen not only their rootedness in a tradition, but also their sense of encountering a sense of holiness. Our goal should be to create together an atmosphere in which students and teachers alike will feel that the critical study of the Jewish past is a religious act, so that knowledge and piety will co-exist harmoniously in their lives.

3. Third, we had a wonderful session on Tuesday devoted to social justice in action. What an inspiration it was to hear people coming out of our movements devoting their lives to various aspects of tikkun olam: including work with some of the most disadvantaged human beings in the world, in the streets of Calcutta. We need to make sure that this kind of dedication is not just left to chance but is channelled in the most effective possible way. There is, I understand, nothing really equivalent in British Jewry to the Religious Action Centre of Reform Judaism in Washington, DC. I am not prepared at present to propose whether, and if so how, this lack should be filled—whether through a new component of LBC, through a joint effort on behalf of our component movements, or through some other model. But an integral part of the student experience here should certainly be the exposure to concrete opportunities for organising and participating in effective programs for tikkun olam. Study and personal piety, important as they are, remain barren without the component of action to mend at least one small corner of the world.

4. Fourth is the engaged commitment to k’lal Yisrael. LBC is committed to religious pluralism in that it encompasses Reform, Liberal, and Masorati expressions of Judaism. I want our students to be proud representatives of a non-Orthodox Judaism, capable of articulating their identity with intellectual cogency, without apologies or insecurities. At the same time, I would hope that we can expand our pluralism to include a positive outlook towards the modern Orthodox expression of Judaism, despite its intolerance towards us. By this I mean the torah u-madda Orthodoxy of Rav Soloveitchik and Yeshiva University, of Yitz Greenberg and David Hartman, I dare say of the Chief Rabbi, rooted in the Judaism of the Rambam, which recognises values in the general culture and is unafraid to incorporate some of these values into a Judaism that is enriched by them.

These modern Orthodox know that they are embattled from the right as well as from the left; on some level, even if they are unwilling to admit it in public, they recognise that we are their allies in defending a middle ground between a corrosive, anti-religious secularism on the left and a militant fanatical fundamentalism on the right. And I believe that we recognise that our people and our faith are all better off because Orthodox Judaism has not disappeared, as many in the 19th century believed it would.

I therefore hope that all of our students will on occasion take advantage of the opportunity of worshipping in an Orthodox synagogue—despite the separate seating and the meḥitza—and of listening to what their rabbis preach. At the very least, all of our students at Leo Baeck College should be able to find their way around the traditional Siddur. I hope that they will try to cultivate good working relations, insofar as possible and on whatever level is possible, with Orthodox colleagues in their future communities. We should of course not idealise the Orthodox as representing the only true Judaism, but neither should we trivialise or demonise them as an entity with which we have absolutely nothing in common.

5. It must also be a goal to foster a strong commitment by our students as Progressive Jews to the land and State of Israel, and to our movement there. I need not reiterate how much more complicated this commitment is today than it was a generation ago. I entered Rabbinical School in September immediately following the Six-Day War, and I was just beginning as rabbi in a small Boston-area congregation when the Yom Kippur War broke out. The visceral sense of connectedness seemed like second nature then; the threat during these two wars felt like a threat to my own survival as a Jew. We talked about the challenge of Arab propaganda on the college campuses, but I could not at that time imagine a situation in which organisations of university professors would seriously propose boycotting all interactions with Israeli academics as if they were pariahs, from a pariah state.

We will need rabbis who repudiate both the cultivation of a vicarious Jewishness that depends on trips to Israel, or identification with Israel’s achievements, and the temptation to regroup, focus solely on the needs of our own Jewish communities, and let Israel take care of its own problems. For I believe that a Diaspora Judaism that allows its ties to Israel to become atrophied will itself become attenuated; and rabbis who have no genuine existential commitment to the land and the state of Israel will feel something lacking in their role as leaders and in their lives as Jews.

I therefore hope we can strengthen the program of study in Israel for all our students, finding ways to make it feasible for those whose family circumstances might lead them to consider it unrealistic. I hope that we can initiate a program of regular visits by Israel scholars who will, like Dr Lavee, share with our students not only their knowledge but also their existential sense of Jewishness. I hope we can find a way to encourage our students and our rabbis to cultivate personal relationships with the Israeli rabbis affiliated with the World Union and support them in their struggle to gain full recognition, as they support us in meeting the challenges of living as Jews in a Diaspora environment that sometimes seems more hostile than it once did.

6. Many of our students and former students have shown their interest in inter-religious dialogue. I consider this to be extremely important and I hope that our students will have the knowledge and the desire to continue such dialogue throughout their careers. We need to prepare them to come to this dialogue without an apologetic agenda, capable of articulating what it is that gives us pain, yet ready to listen and appreciate what gives pain to our neighbours, with honesty about the failings as well as pride in the achievements of our own people. We need to work together with liberal Christians and (the admittedly smaller number of) liberal Muslims such as Maleiha Malik (whose presentation on Tuesday night was so stunningly impressive), to convince broad segments of the population that the problem today is not religion, but fanaticism and intolerance; that each of our religious traditions is multi-valent, complex, and diverse, and can be used to justify many incompatible policies and points of view.

7. Obviously, we need rabbis who will have skills necessary to work effectively in their congregations. This means at least some rudimentary training in counselling and human relations, education, managerial and administrative techniques, and preaching (and while there are signs that this may be a dying art, I still believe that there is a role for the effective sermon as a medium of adult education, inspiration, and occasionally tokheḥa or constructive criticism). Ideally, I think we would all like to see rabbis who are also cultured individuals, tuned in not just to the transient fads of popular culture but to the enduring creations of Christian, Muslim, and western civilisation; capable of drawing upon this legacy alongside our specifically Jewish tradition to respond intelligently to current events. But this, of course, cannot be part of our curriculum; presumably it will be part of the education that our students will bring to the College.

Here then is the list of qualities I would expect a rabbi prepared to serve as leader of the Jewish people in the next generation will have:

*Encompassing knowledge of the literature, thought and history of the Jewish people grounded in a mastery of the Hebrew language;

Personal piety rooted in a strongly cultivated spiritual dimension of life;

*A robust sense of social justice manifest in the willingness to take a stand and inspire others to work together to mend the world, or at least one small aspect of it;

*A commitment to k’lal Yisrael, including the capacity to reach out even beyond our constituent movements, and a fundamental identification with the destiny of our people in Israel and other lands of the Diaspora;

*The equipment to engage in productive dialogue with representatives of the other religious traditions, and to ally with them in causes of common concern;

*The skills to function effectively within the congregation or the other institutions where rabbis may assert leadership roles.

Can we hope to produce all of these qualities in five years? The simple answer is No. It’s impossible. There simply is not enough time—even if our students did not have any other responsibilities outside of their educational commitments. A rabbinic curriculum therefore requires prioritisation and trade-offs. We cannot do everything: which are the things we can do effectively? Which are the most important? Which are the skills that can more readily be acquired once the rabbi has begun to work, and which can probably only be acquired in the seminary? How many students should we be looking for in an entering class? Should it be limited by the projected number of congregational openings in the next six to seven years? Should we be recruiting in the Universities? Should we discourage students who want to come directly from university, in order to focus on those who have already acquired some work experience? And how can the programs we deem to be essential be most effectively funded? These are questions that our administration will continue to debate in the months and years ahead.

But let us make no mistake about one thing: the importance of our calling and our mission as a school. Without a robust, thriving Leo Baeck College, Anglo-Jewry, and European Jewry as a whole, will inevitably decline into relative insignificance between the two poles of Israel and the United States. The mission of preparing rabbis qualified to educate, minister to, and inspire the present and future generations of Jews in this part of the world is of monumental importance, and a sacred calling. The events of the past five days give me confidence that you, who love this College, will not permit us to fall short in responding to this challenge.

---

². A version of this lecture was subsequently published in European Judaism, 39:2 (Autumn 2016), pp. 146–51.↩︎

"The Sermon as a Source for Jewish

History, Literature, and Thought"

David Goldstein Memorial Lecture

12 July 2006 Liberal Jewish Synagogue

It is a great honour and privilege for me to be asked to deliver this lecture in memory of Rabbi Dr David Goldstein. I confess that I was a bit confused when I first received the invitation from Rabbi Wright, and I failed to keep straight in my mind the distinction between Rabbi David Goldstein and Rabbi David J. Goldberg, yibbadel le ḥayyim arukhim ["may he live a long life’]. This is because I knew the two men not in person but only through their published writings. So my immediate association was with To the Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought, and my second was with The Jewish Poets of Spain—both Penguin publications—and I thought: what extraordinary range this congregational rabbi had! Having finally got this sorted out, I am able to appreciate each one as a treasure in his own right, both of them representing a type that was not uncommon two or three generations ago but has become extremely rare today: the congregational rabbi who is not only a serious scholar but who publishes important contributions to the scholarly literature investigating the Jewish past.

I studied for two years at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, focusing on medieval Jewish History and Hebrew literature. I took several courses on the poets of the classical age in Spain and came to love them as Rabbi Goldstein obviously did, as is reflected in his anthology of the poems he translated. I also took a course with a great scholar of Jewish mysticism, Prof. Isaiah Tishby, author of the monumental Wisdom of the Zohar, which Rabbi Goldstein translated and thereby made accessible for thousands of readers who could not read the original Hebrew. His other fields were illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, Jewish bibliography, and Jewish legends and folklore—all of this bespeaking almost as much range as if he had indeed been the author of To the Promised Land. Most of you sitting here tonight knew David Goldstein and can testify to his legacy through his wonderful skills as a rabbi and as a human being; I can testify to his legacy as an author who has enriched many aspects of Jewish Studies for readers throughout the world.³

But I am here to discuss my own research, which for the past 25 years has been focused largely on the history of Jewish preaching and the sermon as a source for Jewish history, literature, and thought. I would like to talk to you tonight about a special kind of sermon: not the timeless sermon that could be delivered a generation before or after it actually was, but rather the topical sermon, in which the preacher is responding to events of the moment.

One category of such sermons is the response to acts of persecution committed against Jews. The tradition for this type of preaching goes back to the Middle Ages. In my first book on Jewish preaching, I published two such texts from manuscript. The first, from 1453, was delivered by a rabbi-philosopher, Joseph ibn Shem Tov, when he was sent by the King of Castile to the Jewish community in Segovia after they suffered from a Holy Week pogrom. The second, by the Polish rabbi Israel of Belsitz, was delivered the first time he faced his congregation following the 1648 Cossack massacres in the Chmielnitski uprising. They are fascinating examples of how Jewish leaders tried to reconcile the suffering of their people with a traditional framework of faith in God.⁴

Needless to say, such persecutions continued and intensified in the modern period. The text of the sermon delivered on May 28, 1881 by Hermann Adler—who later would become Chief Rabbi—in response to the news of pogroms against the Jews of Russia has apparently not been preserved; but we do have a summary in the Jewish Chronicle; according to this the preacher besought his hearers, many of whom were natives of the country in which such deplorable outrages had recently taken place, to prove their sympathy with their brethren by contributing to their relief, and to help in the banishing of all racial antipathies and religious discord.⁵

Especially moving were the sermons delivered to those who had themselves been victimised. A special service was held at St Petersburg on January 18, 1882, a day of public fasting (observed even by the enlightened Jews). The sermon was delivered by the state rabbi, Avraam Drabkin (one of the first rabbis to preach in Russian), who chose as his text from the parashah the obviously resonant verse, The foe said, I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil (Exod. 15:9). Here we have descriptions by several who were present, including the Hebrew writer, Peretz Smolenskin:

My pen trembles in my hand as I recall the impact these words had on those present in the synagogue. It was as if a single sigh burst forth from the hearts of all the listeners, quickly transformed into a thunderous sound that made the walls of the synagogue rattle… Rabbi Drabkin had to desist from his sermon for about ten minutes until those present were able to restrain their weeping.

He then went on to compare the fate of the Jewish people to the fate of the righteous Joseph: "Like our people in its exile among the nations that make its life bitter, so was Joseph hated by his brothers, who could not speak well of him. Joseph recognised his brothers, but they did not recognise him (Gen. 42:8). According to the report in the memoir of Mordecai ben Hillel Ha-Kohen (less detailed on the content than Smolenskin),even the rabbi who was preaching could not restrain himself: he covered his face with his hands, and wept like a small child.⁶

German Rabbis faced a unique challenge following Hitler’s accession to power, for they were facing not a sporadic attack but a repressive regime that rigorously controlled freedom of expression; two members of the Gestapo sat in the front row of each synagogue and monitored what the rabbi said, on the lookout for any sign of disrespect for the Nazi government. Both they and the Jews in the congregation listened very attentively to the sermons in those days. Rabbis resorted to a kind of code language, filled with allusions and innuendos, citing biblical passages and rabbinic midrash about the Babylonians and the Romans, about Pharaoh and Haman, while the contemporary resonance was clear to the congregants who looked to the liturgy and the sermon for inner strength. The sermon became an instrument of instruction, of encouragement, of collective therapy.

The first action directed by the Nazi regime against all the Jews of Germany was a one-day boycott of Jewish businesses set for April 1, 1933. Compared to what was to follow, this was relatively minor, but it had a deep psychological impact. April 1 was a Saturday; Joachim Prinz, a young disciple of Leo Baeck who served as rabbi in Berlin until he left in 1937, describes the service in his synagogue that Friday night on the eve of the boycott. The synagogue was closed one hour before the starting time for the service; there was not a vacant seat, many stood in the aisles, leaned against the walls. That evening, he later wrote, I saw famous Jewish actors, writers and other prominent people who had come for the first time to pray with Jews. When the congregation rose to sing the Shema, the choir and the organist were drowned out. As a matter of fact, the organist, who was a Jew, was so overwhelmed that he could not continue to play. Unfortunately for the historian, his account continues, I have no manuscripts of any of my sermons as I am not in the habit of writing them. And so he reports on their content.

We do indeed have texts of sermons delivered by other German rabbis during these years. A little book called Predigten an das Judentum von heute, Sermons about the Judaism of Today, was published at Berlin in 1935, containing the texts of sermons by 14 German rabbis delivered during the previous year: a wonderful resource that has not yet been properly analysed. A few years later, this is what Max Nussbaum said on November 4, 1938, as transcribed by his secretary:

We modern men are able to sit at a radio and listen to Beethoven and Brahms, to Chopin and to Wagner, serenely being broadcast through the space of the universe and totally unaware of tens of thousands of homeless people down below. Art, music, even the great thinkers and philosophers of the world have no longer any influence on its morals and ethics. The cord is cut, and no radio, however precise and sensitive, is able to receive or to transmit the cries of children, the souls without compass, the moaning of human beings between frontiers.

Five days after he spoke these words, the synagogues of Germany would be destroyed on Kristallnacht, and five months would pass before German Jews would be permitted to gather for prayer again, and before their rabbis would again stand in the pulpit and try to explain what had happened.

Another kind of challenge for preachers comes at the time of the death of a beloved public figure, especially if the death is unexpected, and violent. Perhaps the most poignant inspiration for preaching in the nineteenth-century America was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This occurred on Friday night when Lincoln was in the theatre. Isaac Leeser, in New York, learned of the shooting from newspapers the following morning while walking to the synagogue; the news of Lincoln’s death was disclosed during the Shabbat morning worship service, and Leeser paid tribute to the fallen president, confessing that the dreadful news and its suddenness have in a great measure overcome my usual composure, and my thoughts refuse to arrange themselves in their wonted order.⁷

An even greater challenge for the preacher was captured in an article in the San Francisco Daily of April 16, 1865, apparently written by a member of Congregation Emanuel, which reports that the Rabbi, Elkan Cohn, was handed a note informing him of Lincoln’s death as he ascended the pulpit to deliver the sermon he had prepared. Initially overcome with emotion, the rabbi recovered and spoke extemporaneously, the correspondent recording for his article the substance of the words that, he confesses, does not do justice to the eloquence of the moment, yet retains its power in print.⁸ Virtually every American rabbi spoke on the following Wednesday, April 19, a National Day of Mourning as Lincoln’s body was being brought to its burial place in Illinois.⁹ These sermons reveal a sustained effort to articulate the special qualities of Lincoln as human being and political leadersometimes using explicitly messianic rhetoric and later to apply these qualities to the contemporary challenges of the body politic.

Almost a century later, President John F. Kennedy was killed in the middle of the day on Friday, at a time when most American rabbis were in the process of preparing what they planned to say that evening or the following morning. Suddenly, to preach the planned sermon seemed inconceivable. The challenge was to decide what to say a few hours later, when synagogues throughout the country would be filled to overflowing with Jews who expected and needed to hear some articulation of the meaning of this disaster from the pulpit.¹⁰ (John Raynor happened to be in Columbus Ohio that Friday, scheduled to speak at the local synagogue; he learned of the assassination in a drugstore, and changed his text to pay tribute to the fallen president)

In a very different mood, special eloquence was inspired at the death of Queen Victoria. Her long reign, earlier commemorated in sermons at her diamond jubilee in 1897, allowed Jewish leaders to review and to celebrate the dramatic improvements in Jewish status under her watch. As one preacher put it, We Jews shall never forget that it was during her reign that we lost the Ghetto bend and learned to stand erect. Sixty-four years ago, the Jew, even in this land of enlightenment, was a barely tolerated alien. He was excluded from the boon of a liberal University education. He was ineligible for State Service. He was debarred from Parliamentary representation. What a marvellous change has taken place in two short generations, thanks largely to the example of good Queen Victoria.¹¹

Perhaps the greatest challenge for the preacher comes when one’s country has been attacked, or gone to war. This is the subject of a book I have almost completed, which is scheduled to be published by the Littman Library in 2007. Focusing on American and British preachers, I have found many fascinating examples of what Jewish leaders have said in times of war—how they mediated the values of our tradition with the need to demonstrate loyalty and patriotism in times of extreme crisis. These sermons bring us back to moments in history when the future was as ambiguous and opaque as the future is for us today; when rabbis had to articulate a cogent and compelling message even when they may have felt inner uncertainty and confusion. Let me share with you a few examples.

The first sermon in my book was delivered by Isaac Luria on October 19, 1803 (see below). At that time, there was a genuine fear that that England would be invaded by French forces, as Napoleon prepared his Army of 100,000 for the assault, along with special invasion craft.¹² Officials of the British High Command determined that if a French Army succeeded in landing on British soil, London could not be held, and arrangements were made to move the King and the royal family to safe refuges inland.¹³ With regulations against foreigners tightened, Nathan Mayer Rothschild was assured by a friendly Justice of the Peace that he could have leave of residence in Manchester, but requested his London agent to procure a renewal of his passport, just in case.¹⁴

Swept by a wave of patriotism, many Jews volunteered for military service. On August 15th, 1803, Solomon Hirschel, recently arrived in Britain to assume the position of Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, reportedly preached in the Great Synagogue on the duty of taking up arms in defence of the country, though insisting at the same time that the ritual precepts of Judaism (such as the observance of the Sabbath) should not be neglected save in emergency.¹⁵ A few months later, according to a contemporary news-sheet, Hirschel addressed a practical clash of loyalties for Jewish volunteers when, on the National Fast Day proclaimed by King George III for October 19, 1803, ten regiments were instructed to parade through the city, attend the worship service in one of the churches and take their oath of allegiance there. The news-sheet reported:

By an order from their High Priest¹⁶ [Jews] were prohibited from attending in our churches during the time of Divine Service. The High Priest, however, expressed his highest concurrence to their taking the oaths of fidelity and allegiance to our king and country. These gentlemen accordingly took the oaths, either upon the drilling-grounds of their respective corps, or in the vestry-room of the churches, as circumstances required. They were sworn upon the Book of Leviticus instead of the New Testament.¹⁷

The compromise arrangement seems to have been satisfactory.

On the actual morning of the Fast Day, the Times editorial page invoked its prestige on behalf of the event, in what it conceded to be an unconventional endorsement:

Perhaps the British nation were never summoned upon a more solemn and more awful occasion than the present, to prostrate themselves before the Divine Being, and solicit [God’s] protection…

We shall, therefore, confidently expect the great satisfaction of seeing a universal reverence testified by all ranks of people for this day of religious humiliation. We allow, that it is a day appointed by human authority only, but all seasons are proper for the great duty of worship, and there is something at least sublime and impressive in the spectacle of a whole people uniting, on the same day, and almost at the same hour, in supplications to their God, and in earnest solicitations for his divine assistance.

The following day, as if to underline this theme of inclusiveness, the Times wrote in its review of the various religious services that "The Rev. Solomon Hirschel assembled the Mosaic Congregation together at the Great Synagogue, Duke’s Place, and delivered a patriotic Sermon … after which prayers were read.

Not to be outdone, in the absence of a proper Rabbi, the Sephardi Synagogue at Bevis Marks requested one of their lay leaders, Isaac Luria, to deliver the sermon and—perhaps because of the public notice given by the Times to Hirschel’s patriotic sermon at the Great Synagogue—the leaders of Bevis Marks brought about a speedy publication of the text, which had been delivered in Spanish, in an English translation. It was clearly important for these Jews to demonstrate to their Christian neighbours that they were fulfilling the King’s command as loyally as all other citizens. Like others on that day, the preacher emphasised the providential order that regulated the events of history in accordance with divine justice, insisting therefore that fasting, prayer, and repentance was necessary, alongside military preparedness, to ensure success in the war effort. The Sephardi preacher insists on the loyalty of Jews to their country, not only in England, but wherever they live. He concedes that the Jews of France were praying on behalf of Napoleon’s forces, but he insists that they could not be praying for the devastation of Britain. This theme—that civilians and soldiers on both sides of a conflict were invoking God’s aid through prayer—would be raised as a theological scandal later in the century, and especially during the Great War.¹⁸

An American example. July 4, 1863 was a Saturday, Sabato Morais, a Sephardi immigrant from Italy serving as religious leader of the Mikveh Israel Sephardi Congregation in Philadelphia, one of the greatest American rabbis of the 19th century, delivered a Sabbath morning sermon. This particular Sabbath was distinguished for three reasons. It was the American Independence Day, an occasion for celebration. It was also in the Jewish calendar the Seventeenth Day of Tammuz, a traditional day of mourning and fasting, commemorating the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem, beginning a three-week period of solemnity (though when it comes on the Sabbath, the actual fast is postponed until the day after the Sabbath). There was thus a tension between the mood of the American and the Jewish national occasions-one challenge for the preacher.

But there was a third component to the date in 1863: it was the day following the conclusion of the Battle of Gettysburg. On Saturday morning, the news of the outcome of the battle was not yet accessible to Morais in Philadelphia—the news of the Union victory would be published in special-edition newspapers in the early afternoon, shortly after the sermon was delivered. When Morais prepared the text of his sermon, and when he spoke to his congregation, it was still unclear to the preacher and his congregants whether the Confederate Armies that had penetrated into Pennsylvania would break through the Union lines and threaten Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington, D.C. That was a real and terrifying possibility at the time

One final factor had an impact upon the content of the sermon. The heading over the published text, which appeared in a Jewish weekly on Friday, July 10, states that it had been delivered on the previous Sabbath at the request of the Philadelphia Union League. This patriotic organisation was founded in 1862 in strong support of the war effort and the policies of President Lincoln. In the text of the sermon itself, Morais confirms the heading, saying that he was officially asked to recall [the occasion, viz., Independence Day] to your memory, and that A stirring oration on political topics may perhaps be anticipated as the most fitting manner of complying with the request. This is a rather dramatic indication that there were Christians in Philadelphia who cared about opinions in the Jewish community and recognised the role of the preacher in influencing their mood. It stands to reason that members of his own synagogue would have been aware of this request, and—as he indicates in his remark about a stirring oration—expectations for the sermon would have been keen.

Yet Morais says—both because of the significance of the date in the Jewish calendar and because of the bleakness of the current circumstances—that he cannot give the up-beat, inspirational, patriotic address that the Union League would have desired and that some in the audience undoubtedly anticipated. The prevailing mood (which would change so dramatically in just a few hours) is reflected in the preacher’s choice of a biblical text, words said by King Hezekiah during the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem.: This is a day of trouble, of rebuke, and derision (Isa. 37:3). And he continues to present a gloomy picture of contemporary events, alluding in a highly rhetorical passage to the great battle that he thought was still being waged some ninety miles away: The murky clouds which have long hovered all over the American horizon, gathered at length menacingly nearer to our houses. The thunder was ready to burst upon our heads, and we—in our mad security—neglected to set up the lightning rods, wherewith to blunt its violence. Behold, my hearers! the deplorable consequences and weep. The dust raised by the feet of invasion has tarnished our escutcheon. Havoc and devastation rage in our borders… (Needless to say, we don’t preach like this anymore. Perhaps the last American national public figure who spoke this way and was celebrated rather than ridiculed for it was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.)

I skip over sermons delivered during the Franco-Prussian War, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, and what was originally called The Great War to provide an example from World War II. Once again, the British government reverted to the old tradition of the Intercession Service (somewhat transformed from the Day of National Fast, Humiliation, and Prayer that was proclaimed frequently on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during the nineteenth century). The day was 7 September 1941. German forces were advancing far into Soviet territory; virtually an entire continent was under Nazi control. On the previous 11th of May, the Great Synagogue on Dukes Street had been hit by German bombers and in September the gravely damaged walls were due to be torn down. Nevertheless, the decision was made for London Jews to gather in the ruins of the Synagogue.

Here is the report in the Jewish Chronicle: Every section of the Community was represented there; and, when the service began at 11 o’clock, hundreds of people were packed together standing within the four ruined walls of the Synagogue, while in Creechurch Place, where amplifiers were installed, between 2000 and 3000 more people stood. Outside also were many non-Jews, among them soldiers and airmen, including officers, in uniform… Many tears were shed during the service, as old members sorrowfully looked round at the ruins where once they used to worship. A temporary platform and reading desk were fixed in the place that originally contained the Ark. The Chief Rabbi [Joseph Hertz] delivered his sermon vigorously and forcefully, and his powerful voice could be heard above the droning of the aeroplanes that occasionally passed over. Here is part of what Hertz said:

Out of the depths I cry unto thee, exclaimed the Psalmist in the days of old… From amid the ruins of Thy Sacred House we cry unto Thee is our supplication on this National Day of Prayer. The sight of this once noble sanctuary, wrecked to its foundations by the blind fury of the enemy, will touch the heart of every one who prays for the triumph of Right and Freedom in the universe. And after appropriate homiletical and inspirational appeal to the importance of faith alongside the need for human effort to blot out the Amalek of that generation, he concluded, Unshakable, therefore, is our confidence that a new day of freedom will dawn for all men; that God will comfort Zion and rebuild all her waste places; that victory will crown the righteous cause of Britain, and the Great Synagogue will rise again.¹⁹

That was some 65 years ago. It’s not impossible that someone in this audience was present as a child on that occasion, and remembers hearing the words of Rabbi Hertz amid the ruins; or at least remembers parents talking about the event.

But every one of us remembers September 11, 2001, and every rabbi recalls the challenge of deciding how to address this event on the preaching occasions that followed. The attacks came on a Tuesday. A few days later were the Shabbat services, then on Monday night and Tuesday, Rosh Hashanah. Most rabbis had by that time prepared their Rosh Hashanah sermons. Should they keep their prepared texts and concentrate on the Sabbath sermon? Or should they wait for the large congregation on Rosh Hashanah for their main sermonic response? And what should they say? 24/7 news coverage had saturated the media with every conceivable insight. Was it the rabbi’s role to emphasise the evil of the attackers? The perversion of religion used to justify mass murder of civilians? The need for military response to rid the world of terrorism? Or should the rabbi emphasise the need for introspection: what have we done to make others so furious at us that they could act in that way?

Fortunately, we have some answers to this question pertaining to the British rabbinate, because our colleague Rabbi Jonathan Magonet gathered material for an issue of European Judaism entitled The Aftermath of September 11, which contains his own Survey of New Year Sermons and eight actual examples of sermons preached on those Days of Awe. I will end by reading a few sentences from two of these sermons:

There is therefore an inescapable duty to take strong action against the perpetrators and those who have in any manner aided and abetted them. And not only for the sake of justice. For this new phase in the ghastly history of terrorism holds unprecedented dangers for us all. The real possibility that terrorists willing to commit suicide may yet get hold of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons poses a threat to the very survival of humanity. Not only a matter of justice, therefore, but for the sake of our own safety and that of generations to come, it is imperative that prompt and resolute action be taken… The Prophetic exhortation u-ve’arta hara mikibekha, You shall eradicate the evil from your midst (Deut. 13:6) needs urgently to be heeded.

But this worthy aim can easily get mixed up with other motives such as pride and revenge, which masquerade as moral principles but are really nothing of the sort, and which would never have had the approval of the Prophets. On the contrary, they constantly inveighed against nationalistic power politics. And these extraneous motives could easily prompt rash actions that only compound the evil by inflicting still more innocent suffering and creating new and even greater dangers. Happily, the rhetoric we have heard from George Bush, Tony Blair and other world leaders has so far been relatively restrained and free of jingoism.

Let us hope and pray that they and their advisers will keep cool heads in the days and weeks to come. In any case, it is one thing to conquer evil and another to establish goodness. That is a much bigger task. It requires education: the teaching of love instead of hate, of moderation instead of fanaticism, of generosity instead of greed."²⁰

These words may indeed sound familiar to some who are sitting here tonight. The first quotation was from Rabbi John D. Rayner, spoken on Yom Kippur, I believe from this very pulpit.

The second sermon:

If vengeance is the outcome of anger and outrage, of impassioned, unvented despair; if it is not the appropriate response to the events of last week, how can one move beyond this inevitable and instinctive reaction to find a measured and morally defensible and just response the atrocities in the United States? How do you acquire the vision to move from a sense of wanting to kick out in blind anger and grief, to a position of foresight and justice?

We must recognise the enormity of the danger that fanatical religionists present to our world, with their psychotic and perverted view of the value of human life and death. But we cannot abandon our vision of religion as an irreplaceable redemptive force in human history. A liberal and tolerant expression of religion should allow us to move beyond vengeance, beyond the raw anger and desire for retribution. It should offer us vision and foresight, the desire, at least, to understand, and both the moral imperative to bring to justice those who have perpetrated this evil and the determination to extend hands of friendship and possibilities of dialogue—particularly with British Muslims in this country.

Does anyone recognise these words? They are from the Rosh Hashanah sermon of Rabbi Alexandra Wright, delivered at the Radlett and Bushey Reform Synagogue; she has graciously made available to me her text. I have spoken mainly about the sermon as challenge for the preacher at critical moments in history; but there is also a challenge for the congregant: to listen, to concentrate, to evaluate critically, to remember what is said. I personally have never forgotten the wide advice given by one of my teachers in rabbinical seminary: Whenever you get up in front of a congregation to deliver a sermon, be careful of what you say. Someone out there might be listening.

I hope I have succeeded in convincing you of the importance of the sermon first and foremost for the people who heard it at a critical moment, but also for those of us who seek to understand those critical moments in our nation’s past and to draw guidance from the written texts for the present and the future.

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³ Among his other important books are Hebrew Poems from Spain (Littman Library, 1965) The Golden Age of the Jews in Spain, 3 volumes, published by Leo Baeck College, in 1983; and Jewish Legends (New York, 1988)↩︎

⁴ The full texts of these sermons in translation are accessible in Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200 – 1800|: An Anthology (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 167–79, and 286–300.↩︎

⁵Jewish Chronicle, June 3, 1881, p. 11. The summary of his sermon given five weeks later at a Manchester rally, appealing for relief funds, also includes an element of self-criticism, describing inappropriate behaviour by Jews in England (Jewish Chronicle, July 8, 1881, p. 6).↩︎

⁶ Dinaburg (Dinur), From the Archive of Peretz Smolenskin (Heb.), p. 81. Smolenskin went on to report that newspaper correspondents were present; they asked for the text of Drabkin’s sermon so that they could print it in Russian as an accurate, detailed account of the fast, but that no report was printed, lest sympathy for the Jews be aroused in the hearts of the indifferent Russian population (pp. 81–82). Ha-Kohen, Olami, 1:192–94 (I owe this reference to Benjamin Nathans). On the impact of the sermon, see Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, 2:286; cf. Elon, The Israeli: Founders and Sons, p. 72.↩︎

⁷ Emanuel Hertz, ed., Abraham Lincoln, The Tribute of the Synagogue (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1927), p. 137.↩︎

⁸ Hertz, Abraham Lincoln, p. 138.↩︎

⁹ Fourteen of these sermons—in English and in German, some published immediately as pamphlets, others preserved in different forms—were gathered together with dozens of sermons from the following Sabbath and on subsequent anniversaries of Lincoln’s birth in a marvellous collection called Abraham Lincoln: The Tribute of the Synagogue (above n. 11). An apparently complete text of the sermon preached on the assassination of President McKinley by the Brooklyn rabbi Godfrey Taubenhaus was given by the Brooklyn Eagle, September 20, 1901, p. 14↩︎

¹⁰ See, for example, Rudin, Very Truly Yours, pp. 273–74; Freehof, President John F. Kennedy: In Memoriam; Harold Saperstein,Martyr for the American Dream; Raynor, John F. Kennedy" Immanuel Jakobovits, Journal of a Rabbi, pp. 271–75; Brodie, Tribute to the late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Unfortunately, no systematic effort has been made to collect the records of what was said on that Shabbat. At an analogous situation in Francethe assassination of the President by an anarchist in 1894the Chief Rabbi Zadoc Kahn preached at the memorial service: Marrus, The Politics of Assimilation, p. 145.↩︎

¹¹ Hyamson (Dayan of the United Synagogue), In Memoriam: Queen Victoria, p. 165. See also the eulogy by the Chief Rabbi, Hermann Adler, The Late Queen↩︎

¹² For a current semi-popular overview, see Tom Pocock, The Terror Before Trafalgar, e.g., pp. 90–119; for greater detail, Harold F. B. Wheeler and Alexander M. Broadley, Napoleon and the Invasion of England, and, most recently focusing on public discourse, Stuart Semmel, Napoleon and the British, pp. 41–63 and 100–1.↩︎

¹³ A. F. Fremantle, England in the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols., 1:385−86.↩︎

¹⁴ Richard Davis, The English Rothschilds, p. 22.↩︎

¹⁵ Cecil Roth, The Great Synagogue, London, 1690−1940, pp. 203−4; Roth neglects to provide a source for his statement. The text of this sermon was not published and is apparently not extant; it would be interesting to